This has been my point all along. Instead of debasing this guy for "clearly not understand technology", why not simply acknowledge he doesn't give a shit, and move on. Don't act so surprised people in powerful positions with loads of cash might not want to leave their comfort zone. Again, the movie and music industry is making record profits - don't fix it if it ain't broken - just litigate.

And it's too bad Dumenco linked to the NYT article covering the captive journalists...I inadvertently used up one of my 20 lives. Wait...cache cleared - and we're good!

And as for the "dwindling number of journalistic organizations left on the world stage that do actual, honest-to-God reporting -- of 'news'", he's absolutely right. These honest-to-God organizations found the WikiLeaks story to be most engaging, and covered it thoroughly and with great professionalism...the inflammatory Assange angle, I mean, not the actual content of the leak - c'mon, that would be too easy!

But lastly, you can (IMHO) glean a bit of a Freudian slip at the very end of Dumenco's piece, where he states (emphasis my own):

Which makes knee-jerk bashing of attempts to enable reader support for such news-gathering seem not only knee-jerk petty, but profoundly myopic.

His wording struck me as being fairly backwards to his entire argument, or at the very least, seems to acknowledge that the NYT put the cart before the horse.

What I mean is why the hell would a for-profit news agency create a product / offer a service / do anything "to enable reader support" - isn't the idea to make money? Last I checked, the NYT wasn't NPR. In the age of 24/7 news media consumption, the NYT should be scrambling (read: spending $40 million) to attract readers with scarcities which then manifests support.

While I do agree their name alone will garner subscribers, they need to offer reasons to purchase the subscription, apart from the guilt-ridden argument of "Hey guys, c'mon. I mean they send their journalists to places...I mean, that costs money, guys."

...then in the spirit of taking everything overly literally and not reading between the lines, I guess it's not copyright infringement if I send a copyrighted song to some of my friends, right?

Emailing copies of a copyrighted song to all of your friends.

Again, this is badly worded, but the point still stands. You can be wrongly accused of file-sharing if you use an unsecure router, which is clearly what is meant by the college's statement...which any moron in a hurry could realize, but...but...straw man!

Hm, I doubt most people who violate the basics of phone etiquette would implicate themselves in a survey. Am I wrong or do these people seem oblivious to their own behavior? Not sure they're the right folks to be asking.

I see your point however, and agree the results of the survey are essentially bogus, but I can also see why they may have phrased the question in the way they did. Self-reflection isn't most people's strong suit.

Mike, you seem a bit naive (or gleefully ignorant!) of the fact that no matter how much money the movie industry pulls in, record-breaking or otherwise, it will always claim that piracy is eating away at its bottom line. And obviously whether that's true is the entire rub: some claim more exposure leads to more sales, other clearly see piracy as a lost sale, and not free advertising as it were.

But I'm not sure the argument being made here is entirely fair, since it doesn't try to understand the MPAA side of the story...that said, it's clear they only want _more_ money. Obviously the MPAA tracks its books, and it knows its seeing booming profits, so why claim piracy is hurting sales? Because they want more money!

Again, there's no need to paint the MPAA as a bunch of bumbling suits who can't turn on a computer. They are clearly a bunch of smart folks, who can earn a buck, and they've been doing it for a very, very long time. And even in the face of all these technological disruptions, they are still killing profits - so let's give credit where credit is due, and realize that these people just want MONEY.

They may play stupid and scream, "Those pesky kids on their interwebz are stealing my music, so please Congress do something!" But we all know this is a ploy, they are smart, they can clearly see piracy is not a large a problem as once thought, but why let the facts get in the way of legislation.

You think we've hit critical mass? While the keyboard commandos type furiously away, the real world watches Egypt and the real struggle those people must deal with. After you hit up StarBucks, we can talk about how America is being brought to its knees.

"That, of course, is a case of focusing on the technicality of the situation, rather than the reality of the situation. With Rojadirecta, it's pretty clear that the site was used almost entirely by people in Spain, not in the US."

The reality of the situation is that this domain was the property of the US.

"I agree that the Anonymous attacks were childish and probably counterproductive...By spending so much time, effort and resources in trying to track down some people who were making a statement online, all that officials have done is to give them that much more attention -- which is exactly what they wanted."

Wait...so although these attacks from Anonymous spawned a massive, unnecessary, resource-heavy response from law enforcement, which "is exactly what [Anonymous] wanted", the attacks were childish and unproductive?